Not long before the Lancaster KB 882 settled down in Edmundston for half a century, the plane was keeping its Cold War eyes and ears on Russian fishermen, real or pretending, off the East Coast of North America.

As the Cuban missile crisis ended in October 1962, the Lancaster helped to make sure the Soviet Union did what it promised and nothing it shouldn’t.

Although the plane started out as a bomber near the end of the Second World War, it spent its last years in reconnaissance — the phase that a painstaking restoration of KB 882 aims to evoke.

“It flew a number of missions taking photographs and listening in to Russian ice stations near the North Pole,” said Chris Colton, executive director of the National Air Force Museum, which acquired the plane last year.

“And it was involved in the Cuban missile crisis, flying up and down the East Coast of Canada, listening in to the various Russian trawlers that were out there.”

The Lancaster KB 882 is getting a meticulous restoration by experienced volunteers and others. (Submitted by Brad Denoon)